Reviews of a Diode-Pumped Alkali Laser (DPAL): a potential high powered light source

He Cai; You Wang; Juhong Han; Guofei An; Wei Zhang; Liangping Xue; Hongyuan Wang; Jie Zhou; Ming Gao; Zhigang Jiang

doi:10.1117/12.2183410

4 March 2015 Reviews of a Diode-Pumped Alkali Laser (DPAL): a potential high powered light source

He Cai, You Wang, Juhong Han, Guofei An, Wei Zhang, Liangping Xue, Hongyuan Wang, Jie Zhou, Ming Gao, Zhigang Jiang

Proceedings Volume 9521, Selected Papers from Conferences of the Photoelectronic Technology Committee of the Chinese Society of Astronautics 2014, Part I; 95211U (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2183410
Event: Selected Proceedings of the Photoelectronic Technology Committee Conferences held August-October 2014, 2014, China, China

Abstract

Diode pumped alkali vapor lasers (DPALs) were first developed by in W. F. Krupke at the beginning of the 21th century. In the recent years, DPALs have been rapidly developed because of their high Stokes efficiency, good beam quality, compact size and near-infrared emission wavelengths. The Stokes efficiency of a DPAL can achieve a miraculous level as high as 95.3% for cesium (Cs), 98.1% for rubidium (Rb), and 99.6% for potassium (K), respectively. The thermal effect of a DPAL is theoretically smaller than that of a normal diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL). Additionally, generated heat of a DPAL can be removed by circulating the gases inside a sealed system. Therefore, the thermal management would be relatively simple for realization of a high-powered DPAL. In the meantime, DPALs combine the advantages of both DPSSLs and normal gas lasers but evade the disadvantages of them. Generally, the collisionally broadened cross sections of both the D₁ and the D₂ lines for a DPAL are much larger than those for the most conventional solid-state, fiber and gas lasers. Thus, DPALs provide an outstanding potentiality for realization of high-powered laser systems. It has been shown that a DPAL is now becoming one of the most promising candidates for simultaneously achieving good beam quality and high output power. With a lot of marvelous merits, a DPAL becomes one of the most hopeful high-powered laser sources of next generation.

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He Cai, You Wang, Juhong Han, Guofei An, Wei Zhang, Liangping Xue, Hongyuan Wang, Jie Zhou, Ming Gao, and Zhigang Jiang "Reviews of a Diode-Pumped Alkali Laser (DPAL): a potential high powered light source", Proc. SPIE 9521, Selected Papers from Conferences of the Photoelectronic Technology Committee of the Chinese Society of Astronautics 2014, Part I, 95211U (4 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2183410

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